ETG buys Mobile company, rebrands as ClinicAnywhere

Birmingham-based ETG announced this month it is rebranding in conjunction with its recent purchase of a Mobile medical billing company and the addition of proprietary software to its product line.

The move by the company creates ClinicAnywhere, a full-service IT, medical billing and software company headquartered in Birmingham, where 27 of its 52 employees work.

The rebranded company caters exclusively to health care providers who want to outsource their IT and billing services, claiming as customers more than 600 physicians offices and more than 5,000 end users.

Mike Jones, CEO and one of seven partners in the business – the rest undisclosed – said the company received notice this month that its name trademark had been approved.

He said they plan to expand the company’s footprint across Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Louisiana, North Carolina and South Carolina.

“We want to eventually go national, but of course our initial goals are in the Southeast,” he said. “We’re looking to be a regional player.”

In March, the company purchased the Mobile-based medical billing company Medical Practice Management for an undisclosed price, folding the company’s services into the ClinicAnywhere lineup. It began marketing proprietary electronic medical record, or EMR, software the same month.

The expansion comes as the federal Affordable Care Act forces health care providers to modernize their medical record and billing systems, offering incentives for those that do and penalties for those that don’t.

The increased capital investment in the sector means big business for companies like ClinicAnywhere.

“It definitely blew a big tailwind into our business,” Jones said. “Because everybody is interested in pursuing those incentives and most don’t have the systems or infrastructure to support that.”

Already, the incentives have motivated hospitals to upgrade their systems. The county-owned hospital for the poor, Cooper Green Mercy Hospital, spent $2.6 million upgrading its EMR infrastructure this year. In return, it has already received $2.17 million from Medicaid with another $1 million in incentives anticipated from Medicare by October.

Cooper Green Chief Operating Officer and Director of Information Services Srikanth Karra, said the hospital is entitled to get up to $6 million in state and federal incentives if it proves the new system works for a period of three years.

While the IT sector overall is projected to grow at an annualized rate of 3.3 percent over the next five years, experts say specialized clinics like ClinicAnywhere could surpass that projection.

“The main hold back for IT spending in the past five years has been from declines in corporate profit,” said Andrew Krabeepetcharat, an industry analyst with the business-research firm IBISWorld in California. “The medical industry might not be affected as much as some other industries.

“Government regulations could definitely make room for niche industry firms to enter the market, so there’s definitely room for growth there.”

Founded in 1997, ETG, formerly known as Evolution Technology Group, was originally a general IT service provider. It dropped all of its non-medical clients in 2003 to focus on the health care sector.

Jones, who joined the company in March 2001, purchased the company with four other investors in December 2002 for an undisclosed price.

While the investors were not revealed, Jones said the ownership changed over time, and the company currently has a total of seven partners.